Talking About Politics

Blogging in the Time of Trump

I have a small confession to make. Even though I post hardly once a week on the average, and even though I’ve barely touched on a number of troubling aspects of the Trump presidency—for example, the vast conflicts of interest, and the apparent ties with Russia–I’m already a bit bored of writing about Donald Trump. It gets so repetitive. Trump lies. He lies casually, habitually, and shamelessly. He has a severely disordered personality, with an emotional maturity and attention span of a petulant child. He shows a worrying authoritarian penchant, indifferent to if not disdainful of basic democratic principles, like an independent judiciary and a free press. He will continue to promote and exploit fear and hatred of racial and ethnic “others,” inflicting a great deal of suffering on innocent people. And he serves as the willing front man for his party’s radical reactionary agenda, which seeks to overturn not just Obamacare, but much of 20th century progressive public policy.

But you know all this. Is it really productive for me to point to every new example, arising almost daily, of the follies and outrages of the current regime in Washington? Especially since there are so many other good sources of news and analysis—in print, on line, and in the cable news programs—that are doing a creditable job. I don’t watch and can’t comment on the coverage by the three broadcast network news programs, but CNN hasn’t shrunk from calling out the nonsense that comes from the White House; MSNBC, needless to say, has been even more forthright. The New York Times, too, has largely overcome the conventional restraints of journalistic pseudo-objectivity and now routinely labels White House falsehoods as false. Even better, on today’s Times op-ed page, David Leonhardt makes a point I’ve already made: we shouldn’t shrink from calling a falsehood a lie just because we can never be absolutely sure of its author’s intent. “[Trump] tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate.” And how could I improve on Kevin Drum’s excellent, pithy characterization of yesterday’s FBI and NSA testimony?

So, from here on out, I’m going to try not to write too much about Trump. I say “try” because it’s not going to be easy: the man and his minions and their policies are so offensive and dangerous that it’s hard not to cry out. But I would like to focus on how we resist and defeat Trump rather than dwell ad nauseam on his awfulness. No promises, though–we’ll see how this works.

2 comments

Al Wegener March 21, 2017 at 6:07 pm

Elliot Linzer March 22, 2017 at 12:46 pm

Good idea, Tony. There are actually other issues out there that are worth talking about. Every day there are good articles in the New York Times. I try to watch Rachell Maddow on MSNBC regularly. I wish I had the time to read all the good articles in The Nation, both on paper on the daily emails and blogs.
Even the best articles on Trump written a week ago are so dated today that they are not worth looking at.
Tony, before putting your thoughts into writing on Trump, ask yourself this question: Do I want to read this a month from now, a year from now?